


A new look

by Atalante



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: And then we will keep on writing, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Twilight of the Apprentice, We will write those things until season 3 starts, another coping with blindness fic, blind!kanan, but I did it nonetheless, yeah I know it's the first one EVER and I'm sooooo innovative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-06-01 00:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6493588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atalante/pseuds/Atalante
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her longer strands of hair curled around his fingers. “And here? New colour, too?”<br/>“Take a guess”, she said. <br/>He tried to watch her through the Force, although he knew that it wouldn’t tell him colours. He could sense her, a whirling bright crescendo – every living being was bright, but he had come to know that those he loved most were shining brighter, as if their feelings for one another radiated through the Force.<br/>Not as if, he corrected himself. That’s exactly how it works.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A new look

“Wanna have a look?“

Kanan had begun to smirk every time they spoke of eyeing, watching, looking, because he knew they were doing it on purpose. Not to hurt him, but to remind him that he could still _see_ , just not with his eyes.

“Always”, he replied, and there was more truth to that. He yearned to have a look. He would have given anything for just having a look at Sabine.

“I dyed my hair. Thought you’d want to see it first. Before anybody else lays eyes on it.”

“Sure, let’s see!” He made a step towards her, one hand stretched out, as it was his habit - lately. She caught it, a warm ungloved hand against his palm and lifted it up to her hair.

“You didn’t just dye it. You cut it, too”, he said, feeling her soft, slick hair.

“A little, yes. I shortened it at the sides.” She grabbed his other hand, the left one. It was far easier now to touch, much less awkward. Even touching Hera – laying his arm around her while the others were watching didn’t trouble him anymore. And she didn’t seem to mind either. Hearing was a passive sense – touching was active, just like watching. You could decide what you wanted to feel, to let in, to picture, you could turn your hands this way and that, like eyes … Well, of course the tactile sense was far more limited in its reach. But the things he couldn’t reach with his hands were within grasp of the Force – and he was already getting better, but it was hard to focus, and all of a sudden, he could sympathize with Ezra’s frustration during their first training sessions.

Oh yeah, it was frustrating, and he missed his eyes like he never would have imagined missing anything. It was as if he was locked inside his head, trapped in the dark, and sometimes he couldn’t help but feeling awfully sorry for himself – and this feeling was sickening, as it closed his internal walls further in, until he wanted to scream and hammer his fists against something that wasn’t there.

He was lucky though. Everytime he started to think he’d gone mad, someone would crack his head prison open to let a little light inside. This time, it was Sabine.

And he was getting better. He knew it, it was just so tiresome and straining, so hard to concentrate _all the time,_ to get attuned to the Force in the way he had attuned to it, when he had fought Maul on Malachor, or grabbed Ezra’s arm, when Vader had pulled at the holocron.

He was mostly feeling – seeing – living beings, and he kept bouncing against the immobile things a Rebel base was pretty much full of. Nonetheless – to be able to sense living beings and thinking beings like droids was a huge effort, and he knew that the Rebel pilots were often startled when he turned his head their way as he went past them and nodded at them. Sometimes he even felt them nodding back, it was as if he could see the blots that were their heads moving.

Of course he didn’t _see_ them – not really, it was not his eyes that took notice, but he could almost feel like his brain was struggling to overwrite his sense of sight with … something else, and he had to focus and concentrate and make it happen. It was straining, like athletic workout, and sometimes he couldn’t sleep because of the dull throbbing pain between his temples. He had to learn to _close his eyes,_ to lie down and shut everything out. The Force needed eyelids – or at least: He needed it to have them.

Sabine made him touch the hair on her temples, behind her ears, in her neck. It was shorter, and he tried to picture her in his mind. “Tell me the colour. Still blue?”

“No!”, she said as if he had insulted her creativity. “It’s ginger. Orange-red.”

His fingers wandered over her scalp. The hair on top of her skull were longer, still a little wet – and now he scented the chemical hair dye on it, under a layer of shampoo, not irritating, simply _there_ , like the fumes of her drying paint. Those scents told him now that she had done what she loved most, and that made him far more happier than the thought that he couldn’t see her starbirds, moonbeams and caricatures anymore. Not to speak of the explosions.

Her longer strands of hair curled around his fingers. “And here? New colour, too?”

“Take a guess”, she said.

He tried to watch her through the Force, although he knew that it wouldn’t tell him colours. He could sense her, a whirling bright crescendo – every living being was bright, but he had come to know that those he loved most were shining brighter, as if their feelings for one another radiated through the Force.

_Not as if_ , he corrected himself. _That’s exactly how it works._

He pictured Sabine in front of him. Smaller, slender, vivid, perhaps a little anxious about how this little talk would go. Perhaps her smile was a bit insecure – no, it never was, she was so sure about this, about how to deal with him and his new reality. Or at least, she was good at _pretending._ So good she even fooled him – something even Hera didn’t manage.

_For Hera, pretending works least although she tries most_ , he thought. He knew that she wore that assuring smile every time he looked at her and that she was, deep down, as worried and trapped and screaming as he was.

“It’s red”, he said.

“Did you guess, or did you _know_?”

“Of course I guessed”, he smiled. “But I’m a good guesser.”

“You are!”, she laughed and he still caressed some strands of her wild hair.

“Orange and red, like a starbird, Bean. I can see you. It looks … beautiful. Really.”

She struggled for words. “Thank you”, she finally whispered.

“You know”, he admitted. “I miss your colours.”

She said nothing. He could sense her mood drop painfully from playful and gentle to simply sad.

“No, I didn’t want to …” His hands fell to his sides, as he sensed how much she was trying to pull herself together. “Hey, Bean, it’s okay! I miss your colours, but I’m glad they’re still there and you can describe them to me. I did see once – I know what to imagine. That’s good!”

She still didn’t answer, and suddenly he was worried.

He was totally dumbfounded as she flung herself at him and hugged him with her lean, muscular arms. He felt her face against his shoulder, the right one where he didn’t wear his armour today. She pressed against him, and he just didn’t know what to do except putting his arms around her, feeling her small, warm body against his own. He felt her nose nuzzling into his sweater.

“I love you.”

“I … I love you, too, Sabine.” He was somehow taken aback. It felt strange, saying these words to someone else than Hera. A few years ago he didn’t even imagine saying them to _anyone._ Sabine had never ever done or said something like that, she’d been hard and crisp and not the emotional type. People around him were a lot softer these days, as if they wanted to make up for the fact that he couldn’t see them. He smiled down at her.

“As … as a brother or some kind of Dad”, she added tentatively, as if the awkwardness just returned to her. He didn’t let go, though, not yet.

“Like family”, he agreed and once more ruffled through her hair. Finally she stepped back a little.

“So, you like my new look!”

“I do. Honestly. You look good in orange and red, starbird.”

“Perhaps even Ezra will say some words. I’d wish he would. I … really. I even thought about hugging him – perhaps he’d be less frozen then.”

“We will get him out of that. It just takes time. But he’ll come out again, and we’re here for him.”

She smiled – he could hear her smiling, although there was sadness in her voice: “Like family.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there, it's just me again coping with the events on Malachor. I'm so glad I'm not alone in this hell of angsty fluff-fanfiction! This might serve as a sequel to that one http://archiveofourown.org/works/6487528 ("Paintings and Primer" by Gracedameron).  
> As always: I'm not a native speaker, and you might write in my epitaph (after "Rebels" killed me): She always tried to be her best. ;)


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